Placer public meetings to ask the question, “How would you spend $18 million in North Lake Tahoe?”

October 25, 2017

Each year Placer County collects about $18 million in guest lodging taxes in eastern Placer County. In three community meetings in early November, the county and its partners at the North Lake Tahoe Resort Association will ask local residents for their thoughts on the best way to spend it on projects and services to improve quality of life and the visitor experience.

The meetings are part of larger effort to broaden community input into how lodging tax revenues are invested locally.

They’ll also offer a chance to revisit the county’s Tourism Master Plan priorities with the community, discuss what’s missing, what’s next, funding strategies to achieve the plan’s goals and even talk through the preferred structure of a new proposed committee that will make recommendations to the county Board of Supervisors about which projects to invest in.

It’s been Placer County’s long-standing practice to invest lodging taxes collected in eastern Placer County back into the communities where they’re generated. On Oct. 23, the county Board of Supervisors approved a resolution to formalize this policy. With recent efforts succeeding in increasing compliance with the county’s lodging tax ordinance, even more funding is expected to be available for local projects in the future.

“We have so many opportunities to invest in eastern Placer County, and we’re in a position to start doing even more,” said Erin Casey, senior management analyst for North Lake Tahoe. “This is a great chance for everyone to share their input on what matters most to them.”

“We appreciate the long-standing partnership with Placer County that has leveraged lodging taxes into millions of dollars of services and improvements in eastern Placer County,” said Cindy Gustafson, chief executive officer of the North Lake Tahoe Resort Association. “We look forward to this effort to jointly engage the community in review and discussion.”